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28 December 2014

A few weeks ago, while we were surfing in YouTube we found the video that you can find below... the news was really interesting for us: New Holland gets back the Guinness World Records to harvest almost 800ton of wheat in only 8 hours using the CR10.90 combine and five T7 tractors with 14 ton trailers each one, so it overcomes the previous record of 120ton. This record demonstrates the high performances of the CR10.90 combine because the previous record was got at 675.84ton what was broken in just ​6​ hours and 36 minutes.

The Guinness World Record was registered on the 15th August of 2014 in HR Bourn and Sons field, in ​​Grange de Lings near ​​Wragby Farm, ​​Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. The field was sowed with Santiago wheat variety in the autumn of 2013, this task was performed before this field was chosen (in May of 2014) to hold this event, so there were real crop conditions.

On that day, harvesting tasks began at 11:17 a.m. and the weather was overcast with a few rain showers after 17:30 and the temperature was 18-21 ºC. The average production of the CR10.90 was 99.7 ton per hour (the maximum peak was 135 ton/h) and the average yield was 9.95 ton per hectare and the average moisture was 16.2%. This Guinness World Record was only gotten with a diesel consumption of 1.12 litres per tonne (we have to highlight the chopper was working whole day).

According to the aim and title of this post, we’ll speak about precision agriculture but we want to highlight it is carried out with a tool what are manufactured in our country, Spain. We have nothing against machinery from other countries ... on the contrary, we think they are all fantastic but in many cases it is not necessary that Spanish farmers spend significant amounts of money to buy an imported implement, e.g. a seed drill or chissel from Germany, England or France because the national machinery is fantastic... on this way, our Solá seed drill gives us outstanding performances.

Regarding the assisted steering system we use, it is developed in Spain so the price is more competitive over another opponent products (we would like to refer to other visual guidance system, that is designed for farmers who choose a really simple system) like our friend company called Agroguía whose products were tested by us few months ago as you can see in this post). As these companies, we could talk about many more Spanish factories like Gascón Internacional, Bellota Agrisolutions, Sembradoras Gil, Arcusin, Ovlac, Tasias,... which perform a great job and a fantastic machinery.

10 December 2014

​Today, we continue with usual sowing tasks in our area and in Spain in general for these months. Once more time, our friend Espejo (from Chinchón) sent us some pictures… this time he had been sowing ​field beans. This crop is unknown for us because we had never sowed it… in fact, we annually sow broad beans (as you can see in this post) to eat them the best recipe is cooking them with ham. In this case, their variety is for feed.

As you will see, he uses a monogram ​seeder machine with 4 rows by Monosem firm; this machine is normally used for so​wing corn. According to his explanations, they have sowed ​field beans (whose fruit is smaller than broad beans) to enable the combine harvester performing a good job and to avoid that the harvester break them. In his area, the farmers gave up sowing them due to the old combine​s broke lots of collected fruits… he hopes not having these problems currently. This plant doesn’t suffer so much with the freeze in the winter mornings, and then this crop is a good option for cold areas.

Regarding the sowing task, the used dose is 130kg/ha sowed with a distance of 72.5cm x 12cm. The Manosem machine works really fine, and it can reach a working speed of about 5km/h. In the following pictures, after the sowing tasks, they use a discs roller to help them with the germination.